Tag: horror

Kate’s Review: “American Vampire (Vol. 4)”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “American Vampire (Vol.4)” by Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque (Ill.), & Jordi Bernet (Ill.)

Publishing Info: Vertigo, September 2012

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: American Vampire flashes back to two very distinct points in American history. The first tale comes from the early 1800’s with the “The Beast in the Cave” featuring art by the legendary Jordi Bernet (Torpedo, Jonah Hex). Learn about the original American Vampire, Skinner Sweet, and his involvement in the brutal Indian Wars, and an ancient evil hidden in the heart of the Old West. Plus, more about the man Skinner used to call his best friend – James Book!

The second tale comes straight from 1950s America, where American Vampire is terrorizing the suburbs with hot rods, teenyboppers and fangs! “Death Race” focuses on ferocious new vampire hunter Travis Kidd – but what is his connection to Skinner Sweet? As the story comes to a violent end, a sworn enemy’s identity is finally revealed, and lots of blood is spilled!

Writer Scott Snyder (Batman, Swamp Thing) and artist Rafael Albuquerque bring together even more threads to the complex tapestry that is the world of American Vampire.

Review: Admittedly as I was going about my read through of “American Vampire”, I picked up “Volume 4” and had an ‘I have no memory of this place’ moment. I had vivid recollections of the previous volume, just as I have recollections of what comes next. But this one didn’t stand out in my mind. So I was eager to dive in and remind myself what this volume had to offer. But as I was reading, I realized that there was probably reason I didn’t remember much. “American Vampire (Vol. 4)” is, unfortunately, the weakest part of the story yet.

But as always, let’s start with what I did like, and that was mostly the story “The Nocturnes”. We follow Calvin, one of the Vassals that was sent on the basically doomed Taipan mission during WWII, who we thought was dead, but actually was turned into a vampire when he was accidentally exposed to some of Pearl’s blood. The good news is he’s still working for the Vassals, and this standalone tale is following him and what he’s been up to. Mostly it’s taxonomy for the organization, categorizing different and new vampire subspecies, and in this story it isn’t a mission that has his interest, but a familial one: once he became a vampire he cut all ties to the living world outside of work, and he just wants to see his brother perform in his singing group. Unfortunately it’s in a sundown town, and also unfortunately, there are vampires afoot. I like Calvin as a character, and I liked seeing this exploration of what you have to give up as a Vassal, as those we have met up until now have been pretty solitary anyway. I also liked the way that it explores Jim Crow racism and sundown towns, and Calvin’s Othering because of his skin as well as his undead status. It’s a perspective we haven’t seen yet in the story and I enjoyed it.

BUT, that said, the other arcs in this collection haven’t aged super well from when they were first published. For one, guess who has once again been relegated to the sidelines: Pearl. She is barely in this book. Felicia Book isn’t in it at all. And we are STILL dwelling on Skinner Sweet, and while I KNEW that he wasn’t actually dead, it’s still frustrating that we didn’t get any kind of breather from him as a character who gets a huge friggin’ spotlight. This story takes us back to when he wasn’t yet a vampire, and we find out that he was actually good friends with James Book of all people, and they fought together during the Indian Wars, and oh boy. OH BOY. For one, the very complex and tragic subject matter at hand just doesn’t really sit well with me these days, given how the U.S. Government has consistently participated in a genocide against Indigenous peoples, and having that as a plot point in this story feels pretty grotesque. For another, we get into what is a well meaning story about the actual first American Vampire, an Indigenous woman named Mimiteh who was attacked by colonizer vampires and staked by the Vassals of the Morning Star as a precaution. After rising from the dead she is worshipped and feared by the Apache peoples that the U.S. Government is trying to overwhelm, and it just feels appropriative. It sure doesn’t help that Mimiteh is stark naked in nearly every encounter we see of her, which makes it feel all the more dehumanizing. And here’s a tip, making James Book, one of the pretty clear cut ‘good guys’ of this series, a participant in colonial driven genocide is probably not a good idea if you want him to remain clean nosed (creepy relationship with Felcia’s mother aside). The other story is about a vampire hunter for the Vassals named Travis Kidd, whose family was killed by a vampire and now he’s trying to take all vampires out. I did like some things about this story, namely that Travis kind of has a Charles Starkweather feel to him, in that when we first meet him he is killing his teenage girlfriend’s family, but they are vampires so it’s not the horrific spree that Starkweather had. It’s a wry reference to be sure. But, SURPRISE SURPRISE, do you know who it is that he ultimately wants his revenge against? You guessed it. SKINNER FREAKING SWEET. So we get very little Pearl in this collection, NO Felicia Book, and we get TWO HUGE STORIES WITH SWEET. SERIOUSLY?!

My feelings towards Skinner Sweet, and I MAY BE THE ONLY ONE?! (source)

Okay, so it was a bit of a stumble, but “American Vampire (Vol. 4)” does set up the next arc with a solid cliffhanger. I feel like Pearl and Felicia get more to do next time around, so onwards I go with higher hopes.

Rating 6: It just hasn’t aged super well. Also, while I knew we weren’t done with Skinner Sweet, I REALLY wish we were done with Skinner Sweet. That said, a story following Calvin is pretty good, and I liked some true crime connection and homages.

Reader’s Advisory:

“American Vampire (Vol. 4)” is included on the Goodreads list “Best Horror Comics/Graphic Novels”.

Previously Reviewed:

Kate’s Review: “Effects Vary”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “Effects Vary” by Michael Harris Cohen

Publishing Info: Cemetary Gates Media, October 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from the author.

Where You Can Get This Book: Amazon

Book Description: Effects Vary features 22 stories of dark fiction and literary horror that explore the shadow side of love, loss, and family. From an aging TV star’s murderous plan to rekindle her glory days, to a father who returns from war forever changed, from human lab rats who die again and again, to a farmer who obeys the dreadful commands of the sky, these stories, four of them award winners, blur the thin line between reality and the darkest reaches of the imagination.

Review: Thank you to Michael Harris Cohen for reaching out an sending me an eARC of this novel!

Halloween season may be over (ugh, it always goes way too fast), but you know me and you know how much I love scary stories. So we aren’t staying away from horror for too long, as today I am taking on “Effects Vary” by Michael Harris Cohen. When this ended up in our inbox, I thought that it was probably about time that I pick up a horror short stories anthology. It has been awhile, after all. And the info I found about it piqued my interest, even though I tend to be a little gun shy about short story collections in general. But the good news is that “Effects Vary” was another positive experience with this format!

The stories in this collection run a real gamut! From different sub genres to different perspective construction to different lengths, the twenty two stories fit together well but all stand on their own in different ways. As always when it comes to short stories, I’ll talk about my favorite three, and then about the collection as a whole.

“Pain Is Your Teacher” : This is one of the shorter stories in the bunch, which is about the length of a drabble (for people who aren’t familiar with fan fiction, that’s a few hundred words at most). A woman writes a farewell letter to her husband as they are settling up their divorce, and as the letter winds down she reveals a last laugh she got upon him after years of abuse. Again, this is a short story, one of the shortest in the collection, but it gets right to the point and goes for the throat almost immediately. I felt like I learned everything I needed to know about Alexander and his nameless soon to be ex wife, and I thought that it was vicious and satisfying in all the right ways.

“Everything Is Forever”: A self proclaimed psychic and mostly charlatan is making an appearance on a TV show and having to explain how one of her recent predictions got things so wrong. As someone who has vivid memories of my nanny watching Sylvia Browne on “Montel”, and as someone who loves a medium story (legitimate or otherwise), I really liked the trajectory this one took. It’s another shorter story in this collection, but even in the limited pages Cohen manages to create a broad narrative and backstory for Joyce the psychic, and creates a tragic circumstance that cuts right to the emotional quick and is absolutely haunting.

“The Ex-Court Painter, Goya, and The Princess”: This one was almost certainly my favorite story in the collection, as it’s unsettling as hell but also has a certain bittersweetness to it. An ex-court painter for Spanish King Charles IV is called back to the palace to paint for the King, even though Goya has taken over. He finds out that the King wants him to paint a portrait of the princess, who as a baby has died tragically shortly after being born. As the painter comes back every year to create a new portrait that imagines how she would have aged, his obsession with the dead princess he has created starts to grow. This one is very creepy, as our ex-court painter becomes more and more fixated on a girl who has been long dead (and who died as an infant no less!), but it also captures grief, regret, and madness in ways that treat more towards melancholy rather than flat out shock or distaste.

The rest of the stories were kind of hit or miss for me, though I do think that there were more hits than misses. Cohen can easily jump from setting to setting and has so many characters and circumstances that all feel well thought out and envisioned, and I thought that all of them did a good job of setting a scene and going on a journey in ways that were quick but satisfying.

If you, reader, are wondering why this has a 7 rating instead of a higher one when I have been generally pretty positive, I will say that there were some ongoing themes in the collection that were really hard for me to deal with, specifically child death. I felt like there was more child death in this collection than I was able to really handle at the time of reading it, as it’s a difficult theme even once in a story. So in a collection of multiple stories that have multiple moments of children dying, it’s probably no surprise that I had a hard time with this. What can I say, I’m unfortunately one of those people that, now that she has a child, is far more sensitive to such things (for examples, I can’t watch Alex Kintner’s death in “Jaws”, and I have to stop watching the opening scene of “Scream” when Casey’s parents come home). This is obviously VERY subjective from reader to reader, so while I had a difficult time dealing with it, another reader may be totally okay with it as a theme in their horror fiction. But it still did have an effect on my reading experience. One could say that effects vary.

You have no idea how proud I was with that little joke. (source)

Overall, “Effects Vary” is an effective and varied collection of dark fantasy and horror tales. I’m sure that most horror fans will find a lot to like here!

Rating 7: A huge array of horror stories for any horror fan, “Effects Vary” is a varied collection of scary tales.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Effects Vary” isn’t on any Goodreads lists as of now, but it would fit in on “Best Horror Short Stories”.

Kate’s Review & Giveaway: “Gallows Hill”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “Gallows Hill” by Darcy Coates

Publishing Info: Poisoned Pen Press, September 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: The Hull family has owned the Gallows Hill Winery for generations, living and working on the beautiful grounds where they grow their famous grapes. Until the night Mr. and Mrs. Hull settle down for the evening…and are dead by morning.

When their daughter, Margot, inherits the family business, she wants nothing to do with it. The winery is valued for its unparalleled produce, but it’s built on a field where hundreds of convicts were once hanged, and the locals whisper morbid rumors. They say the ground is cursed.

It’s been more than a decade since Margot last saw her childhood home. But now that she’s alone in the sprawling, dilapidated building, she begins to believe the curse is more than real―and that she may be the next victim of the house that never rests…

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for sending me and eARC of this novel and thank you to Poisoned Pen Press for sending me a print ARC of this novel!

I can’t believe that Halloween is almost here. While I love Halloween to death, I always get a bit melancholy around the end of October, as it’s my favorite time of year, and when Halloween happens, then it’s over. But fear not! Just because the season is ending, that doesn’t mean that the scares are going to stop on this blog, and let me tell you do I have a doozy of a haunted house story to close out the month with. “Gallows Hill” by Darcy Coates is the second of her novels that I have read, and I went into it with solid anticipation, as I enjoyed “From Below” a great deal. So going from ghost ship to haunted house seemed like a good transition, and hoo boy, I was NOT prepared for this book. This book was SCARY!

One night in particular as I read was filled with anxiety, and I loved it. (source)

In terms of plot and cast of characters, I thought that “Gallows Hill” was well imagined and well presented. I liked Margot, the woman who left the winery as a child with no explanation from her parents for her exile, and who has now returned for the first time, an adult who is inheriting now that her parents have died strange and premature deaths. Coates takes her time in slowly revealing just what is going on with Gallows Hill and the winery, laying out puzzle pieces bit by bit and letting us investigate along with Margot. Everything that seems strange or farfetched has a well thought out explanation, and every character has a part to play. Margot herself is easy to like and easy to relate to, as she discovers what is going on at the same pace the reader does, and I thought that all the pieces came together well, with some solid surprises along with reveals that are perhaps obvious but still weighted with some mystery. Coates makes it easy to invest in every character, which makes the stakes all the higher when creepy things start to turn into the flat out horrifying. And the Gothic setting of an isolated winery with a new owner who has no idea what she is getting into, and what secrets the people around her are keeping from her, fits the sub genre so well while also being a bit unconventional, which was super satisfying for someone who loves a good Gothic horror story.

And let’s talk about scary. This book is SCARY. I absolutely found myself setting my Kindle down in the middle of one particularly scary moment, and told myself ‘I should probably put this down for the night’. But after I went to brush my teeth and get ready for bed, I crawled back into bed and picked it right back up. So obviously it’s also incredibly addictive. Coates really knows how to create a tense moment, and then to ratchet it up about ten times, and the grotesque imagery uneasy history of the horror points, and the isolated and suffocating setting of a country estate haunted by its history is a perfect horror combination. I am not going to go into specifics as it’s far more effective to be surprised. But holy cow, we absolutely get the sense of being stalked and hunted in this moment that I told myself I was walking away. But along with that, Coates doesn’t feel tempted to leave ambiguity open as the story progresses and comes to a close. The end is definitive, and I appreciate that in a time where sometimes horror stories feel a need to leave things open in an effort for a fear of the unknown. Which, fine, if done well. But there is something to be said about committing to a conclusion, and I love that Coates does that.

You can’t do much better than a classic haunted house tale during Halloween, and “Gallows Hill” is a great example of that. I really enjoyed this book and how freaky it was. Darcy Coates is officially a must read horror author for me now, which means I have a lot of back catalog to explore. And I can’t wait.

And wait, there’s more! Given that this is the end of Horrorpalooza 2022, I thought it would be fun to end with a special treat. So I am running a giveaway of a print ARC of this book, that also has Darcy Coates’s signature in the front (thanks again to Mandy Chahal for providing the book!)! The giveaway is open to U.S. residents only and will end on November 3rd.

Enter The Giveaway HERE

And that is the end of Horrorpalooza 2022! I hope that everyone has a fun, safe, and spooky Halloween!

Rating 9: Scary, entertaining, and the perfect Halloween read. If you haven’t tried Darcy Coates yet, start with “Gallows Hill”.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Gallows Hill” is included on the Goodreads list “2022 Gothic”.

Diving Into Sub-Genres: Witch Horror

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

We each have our own preferred genres of choice. Kate loves horrors and thrillers, really anything that will keep her up at night! And Serena enjoys escaping through hidden doors into realms of magic and adventure. We also read mysteries, historical fiction, graphic novels, etc. etc. And that’s not even counting the multitude of sub-genres contained within each greater genre. In this series, one of us with present a list of our favorites from within a given sub-genre of one of our greater preferred genres.

Halloween is nearly upon us, readers, and while I am still full blown into Halloween mode, I’m also acknowledging that the season is going to end in a little more than a week and I am going to be sad (until I buck up and shift into Winter Holiday gear). So for this new “Diving Into Sub-Genres” post, though I usually switch up my genres that house said sub-genres, I’m sticking to horror, and I am going to focus on one of my favorites: witch horror! You all know how much I love witches of ALL stripes, and while I adore empowering and feminist spellcasters I also love vengeful crones who want to make others suffer. I’m very inclusive when it comes to my witches.

Witch horror can be traced as far back as Greek Mythology when Circe was turning Odysseus’s crew into pigs, or Medea was casting spells and killing her children to get back at Jason for daring leave her. You have a number of witches in fairytales as well, from Snow White’s stepmother to the witch who tried to eat Hansel and Gretel. And lord knows in real life a fear of witches led to a lot of violence and suffering because of a religious based mythology and superstition (the targets usually being women, outsiders, and other Others). Yes, witches have had their place as horror icons for millennia, and now I’m going to share some of my favorite witch tales that, I think, represent the sub-genre of witch horror pretty well.

Now here is a caveat: I’m really going to focus on horror when it comes to witch stories on this list. Even though there are SO MANY AWESOME NON HORROR WITCH BOOKS OUT THERE. But I want to be stringent in the sub-genre definitions, and witch horror is different from witch fantasy or witch historical fiction or what have you. Because I struggled with this decision, I am going to briefly list a few titles that aren’t horror but are still fantastic witch or witch related books that you can also give a go before All Hallow’s Eve next week if you aren’t looking for scares: “Cackle” by Rachel Harrison; “Practical Magic” by Alice Hoffman; “The Witch of Blackbird Pond” by Elizabeth George Speare; “Akata Witch” by Nnedi Okorafor; “Cemetary Boys” by Aiden Thomas; and “Hour of the Witch” by Chris Bohjalian.

Book: “The Witching Hour” by Anne Rice

Wanting to start with a classic, but not a classic that goes super far back into centuries and centuries, it seemed that Anne Rice’s “The Witching Hour” was a pretty good jumping off point. This book starts off her “Mayfair Witches” series, which follows a New Orleans witch family that has passed magic, and a pretty bad curse, down through the generations. When Rowan Mayfair pulls a drowned man out of the ocean and brings him back to life, she has to face the fact that she has strange powers, powers that her family has had and that she has tried to suppress. But what Rowan doesn’t know is that there is also a mysterious and dangerous spirit that has haunted the Mayfair Family. Known as Lasher, he wishes to possess the Mayfairs, and he now has his sights set on Rowan. This book follows a line of witches and spans over centuries, and brings Rice’s alluring yet horrific aesthetic to witch horror.

Book: “Hex” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Also known as the witch book that scared the ever loving piss out of me, “Hex” is definitely a ‘vengeful witch’ story that is horrifying and filled with dread until the very last page is turned. The first chapter had me saying ‘what the HELL IS GOING ON?’ for basically the entire length, and I can tell you that this was a common occurrence through this book. Black Spring is a sleepy small town in the Hudson River Valley, where people live and raise their families. But it is haunted by the ever wandering Black Rock Witch, whose eyes and mouth have been sewn shut after her execution during Puritan times led to her curse upon the town. The town keeps total surveillance on the wandering witch, and has kept her a secret from the outside world. But then a group of local teens decide to show her off on the Internet. And this sets off a torrent of deadly consequences for the town and all who live there. This book is scary as hell and doesn’t hold back.

Book: “The Year of the Witching” by Alexis Henderson

This was my favorite read in 2020, as Alexis Henderson’s “The Year of the Witching” is both scary as well as, in some ways, empowering and severely feminist. It’s a mix of historical fiction and dystopia, a world not ours but in a lot of ways like ours. In the small community of Bethel, the townspeople live a religious patriarchal life, and have banished witches into the Darkwood with violence and rage. Immanuelle Moore is herself a rebellion, the biracial daughter of a woman who ran into the Darkwood to find the witches, and who died in childbirth after her return. Immanuelle is trying to keep in line, but is drawn to the Darkwood by the spirits who live there. They give her her mother’s journal, and as she reads she starts to find out the truth about her mother, and the truth about Bethel. This kind of read will make your blood boil, but will take your breath away.

Book: “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: The Crucible” by Roberto Aguirre-Sacassa

Even though the final season of “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” was lame lame lame, I still liked it as a whole because it was creepy, witchy, and a great look at witches with power taken from a bubblegum comic origin. But let me tell you, the comic that it is based upon is SO MUCH DARKER, and that is why it makes this list. Yes, we are following Sabrina ‘The Teenage Witch’ Spellman, as she adjusts to being a teenage witch while living with her witch aunts Hilda and Zelda. But this comic is straight up horror, with murder, dark magic, cannibalism, and black masses like whoa. And I LOVE IT SO MUCH, and I am SO SAD IT KIND OF DIED OUT. I love all the scary stuff that Aguirre-Sacassa brings to this story, and how it still manages to have tongue planted in cheek even as people’s faces are being ripped off and teens are being sacrificed for dark spells. I love handing it to unsuspecting people in my life, and it almost always has a positive, if not scandalized, reaction.

Book: “Goddess of Filth” by V. Castro

Sometimes the witches we deal with in these stories are amateurs, or even inadvertent, and then they unleash something a bit beyond their capabilities that has some serious consequences. That is the kind of horror story that “Goddess of Filth” by V. Castro is, and it’s pretty scary AS WELL AS EMPOWERING (yeah okay, I had to have some empowerment on this list as well, as I’m sure you’ve noticed as you’ve gone through it). Five Latina teenagers are doing some lighthearted witchcraft during the summer after their senior year, but they accidentally summon the spirit of an Aztec goddess, who possesses the shy Fernanda. Now her friends have to try and figure out how to get Fernanda back. But the spirit they are dealing with isn’t what she seems. This book about friendship, identity, imperial oppression, and teenage witchery is fun and pushes expectations of the themes at hand.

Book: “The Witches” by Roald Dahl

Why the heck not end this list with a children’s story? After all, “The Witches” by Roald Dahl is not only a classic children’s book, it also has some scary witches at the heart of it! An unnamed young boy learns about the existence of witches while living with his grandmother in Norway, whom he came to live with after his parents deaths. She tells him how to tell a witch from a human woman, as witches sole goals are to snatch up children and turn them into horrifying creatures. When the boy returns to England, he suddenly finds himself surrounded by witches, and has to thwart the Grand High Witch’s plan to run the world’s children into mice! It sounds pretty tame, but as a child this book is pure nightmare fuel! I hope that all the kiddos out trick or treating next week won’t run afoul any witches like this!

What witch horror books are your favorites? Let us know in the comments!

Kate’s Review: “American Vampire (Vol. 3)”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “American Vampire (Vol. 3)” by Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque (Ill.), & Sean Murphy (Ill.)

Publishing Info: Vertigo, February 2012

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: In the Pacific, Pearl’s husband Henry joins a clandestine group on a secret mission to Japan to hunt a new breed of bloodsucker. Meanwhile, Skinner Sweet has plans of his own…

And in Europe, vampire hunters Felicia Book and Cash McCogan go behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied Romania in search of a rumored vampire cure. Blood and bullets abound in this new collection from the Eisner Award-winning series!

Review: After being (once again) a bit turned off by the previous volume of this series, I was pretty sure I remembered that “American Vampire (Vol. 3)” got back on track in terms of my ability to ‘gel’ with the story at hand. Which is interesting, because in general military stories aren’t REALLY my cup of tea, and hoo boy does this volume REALLY get into the military themes. After all, as we are traveling through American history with our vampires and vampire hunters, it is now World War II.

We have two story arcs that contend with two of the war fronts during this time. The first is a story surrounding Pearl, her husband Henry, and that fucking asshole Skinner Sweet. Henry, feeling old and a bit left behind by his ageless vampire wife, takes up the Vassal of the Morning Star when they recruit him for a military mission in the Pacific: there is the potential for a new vampire threat on an atoll that the group wants checked out and cleared. What he doesn’t realize is that one of the members of the team is an incognito Skinner Sweet who wants to not only cause chaos, but also to get Pearl all to himself. Side note: we do get a background story with Skinner and his old west girlfriend Kitty, who looks a LOT like Pearl, but honestly I don’t give a shit about him and his man pain.

I DON’T CARE, BUDDY. (source)

This arc was good in the sense that it is basically nonstop action, and it has a lot of new vampire mythology exploration that felt really unique and grotesque. I really love how Snyder is creating subgroups of vampires and how they are all different based upon various factors, and I thought that the cat and mouse game between Henry, Pearl, and Sweet was interesting and tense to watch unfold. Because you know that once Pearl gets a whiff of Skinner potentially threatening the love of her life, maker or not, she is not going to sit by and let it happen.

The other arc is a bit earlier in time, an it involves Felicia Book and Cash McCoogan, together again after the terrible conclusion to their previous mission together: in which Sweet injected Cash’s very pregnant wife Lily with vampire blood directly into her womb, causing her to die in childbirth with a very vampiric baby boy named Gus. Felicia blames herself for hesitating on taking Sweet out, and Cash is desperate to keep his child safe, even if he is a feral monster child. The Vassals of the Morning Star has heard of rumors of a vampire cure in Nazi Occupied Romania, and the two of them are recruited to go undercover and try to see what’s what. They both have their reasons beyond loyalty to the group; Felicia is part vampire herself (as she was conceived when her father was in the throes of turning into a vampire, and it has affected her), and Cash wants Gus to be cured. THIS arc was the one I liked better, as it has some suspenseful moments of espionage, it has some really cool vampire world building, and I loved the tense relationship between Felicia and Cash as they are working together in hostile Nazi circles and contending with unexpected revelations.

But the biggest step up from the past volume is that Pearl finally, FINALLY, gets a bit more to do, and Felicia has her own riveting storyline and character arc that jumps off the page. It’s true that the last volume had a lot of Felicia (who is probably my favorite character in the series), but there was VERY little Pearl, and not only do we get to see her in vampiric action again, we also get to see her kick serious ass and come to aid her husband Henry when he’s in far over his head. I really love both of these women, who are dealing with their various guilts and insecurities and baggage, and I love that they get to take a bit of control over their situations, be it Pearl finally confronting Skinner Sweet, or Felicia seeking out a vampire cure so she can perhaps live a more normal life. And I also love the chemistry between Pearl and Henry, and the chemistry between Felicia and Cash. What can I say? I do love a nice romance, even if some are more tragic than others.

“American Vampire (Vol. 3)” gets the series back on track for me, and it both concludes some story arcs while also opening up the possibilities for others. The vampire lore is still fun and original, and it keeps reminding me of how much I love this series as a whole.

Rating 8: Two solid war time stories and more action for my gals Pearl and Felicia gets our series back on track.

Reader’s Advisory:

“American Vampire (Vol.3)” is included on the Goodreads lists “Weird War”, and “Vertigo Titles: Must Read Comic Books A-E”.

Previously Reviewed:

Kate’s Review: “Jackal”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “Jackal” by Erin E. Adams

Publishing Info: Bantam, October 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: It’s watching.

Liz Rocher is coming home . . . reluctantly. As a Black woman, Liz doesn’t exactly have fond memories of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a predominantly white town. But her best friend is getting married, so she braces herself for a weekend of awkward and passive-aggressive reunions. Liz has grown, though; she can handle whatever awaits her. But on the day of the wedding, somewhere between dancing and dessert, the bride’s daughter, Caroline, goes missing—and the only thing left behind is a piece of white fabric covered in blood.

It’s taking.

As a frantic search begins, with the police combing the trees for Caroline, Liz is the only one who notices a pattern: a summer night. A missing girl. A party in the woods. She’s seen this before. Keisha Woodson, the only other Black girl in school, walked into the woods with a mysterious man and was later found with her chest cavity ripped open and her heart missing. Liz shudders at the thought that it could have been her, and now, with Caroline missing, it can’t be a coincidence. As Liz starts to dig through the town’s history, she uncovers a horrifying secret about the place she once called home. Children have been going missing in these woods for years. All of them Black. All of them girls.

It’s your turn.

With the evil in the forest creeping closer, Liz knows what she must do: find Caroline, or be entirely consumed by the darkness.

Review: Thank you to Bantam and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

I love it when books I haven’t heard of wind up in my email, as it gives me a reason to expand my horizons a bit AND the potential to find a story I may not have discovered so quickly otherwise. When I opened up the email that described “Jackal” by Erin E. Adams, it had a number of traits that caught my eye. One, it’s described as horror, always a plus. Two, I’m always eager to read horror by authors of color. Three, the missing person thriller is always a subgenre I’m going to be all over. So I went into this book with anticipation, and I am happy to report that I was pretty happy with it!

As mentioned, I love a missing person story, and “Jackal” has that along with some supernatural beats. Adams slowly builds up the suspense and dread by showing us a few of the moments where other Black girls have gone missing and subsequently found with their hearts missing, culminating with our protagonist Liz, whose best friend’s daughter Caroline is the newest missing girl. Liz takes it upon herself to try and find Caroline, as the local police are dragging their feet, and she is considered a suspect due to the fact she was the last person to see Caroline at her mother Mel’s wedding. Though let’s be honest; it’s also because Liz is Black. As Liz tries to piece things together to find Caroline and clear her name, she starts to find a patter of other Black girls who have gone missing and wound up dead. I loved watching Liz find the clues, and was very affected by how the stakes get higher and higher and Liz gets more and more desperate. By the time we got to the supernatural reveal, it didn’t click QUITE as much for me as I had hoped it would, but I think that may be more on my own expectations on what was going on. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll just kind of leave it at that. I do think this book is both thriller and horror overall, it’s just that the thriller elements were a bit stronger. It’s still a strong story, suspense wise.

But it’s the real life horrors of this book that really stand out. Adams effectively captures Liz’s experience in this small Rust Belt town, and how much Othering she felt because of her race, just as she captures the inaction taken by the authorities over missing Black girls in the community. Liz left Johnstown and rarely looked back, and when you see what it’s like for her when she returns you completely understand her need to get out. Some of the reasons are less obvious, like microaggressions she experiences from those around her, to the way she felt a need to conform to fit in. Others are more blatant, like the fact that her white best friend’s family is very clearly suspicious or dismissive of her even though they have known her for years and she has given no reason for them to be that way. And there is, of course, the maddening truths of a clear pattern of young Black girls disappearing and then ending up brutally killed, and the community just doesn’t really seem to care, leaving the loved ones left behind to mourn and suffer without any hope of justice. There are other more spoilery examples of this, some of which involve the way that goal posts are shifted by a racist society once Black people are able to find success for themselves, but I’m leaving that as is, once again. Just know these tidbits are far reaching and well conceived.

“Jackal” is suspenseful and eerie, an effective thriller with real life horrors to draw fear from. I am absolutely going to be looking at what Erin E. Adams does next.

Rating 8: A thrilling mystery with supernatural and horror elements, “Jackal” is a missing person story that has larger questions about societal and systemic racism.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Jackal” is included on the Goodreads lists “Mystery/Thriller/Detective Books Featuring and Written by Black Women (Part 4)”, and “Anticipated Literary Reads for Readers of Color 2022”.

Kate’s Review: “Such Sharp Teeth”


This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “Such Sharp Teeth” by Rachel Harrison

Publishing Info: Berkley Books, October 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: A young woman in need of a transformation finds herself in touch with the animal inside in this gripping, incisive novel from the author of Cackle and The Return.

Rory Morris isn’t thrilled to be moving back to her hometown, even if it is temporary. There are bad memories there. But her twin sister, Scarlett, is pregnant, estranged from the baby’s father, and needs support, so Rory returns to the place she thought she’d put in her rearview. After a night out at a bar where she runs into an old almost-flame, she hits a large animal with her car. And when she gets out to investigate, she’s attacked.

Rory survives, miraculously, but life begins to look and feel different. She’s unnaturally strong, with an aversion to silver–and suddenly the moon has her in its thrall. She’s changing into someone else–something else, maybe even a monster. But does that mean she’s putting those close to her in danger? Or is embracing the wildness inside of her the key to acceptance?

This darkly comedic love story is a brilliantly layered portrait of trauma, rage, and vulnerability.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

It’s always a cause to celebrate when Rachel Harrison has a new book out! I’ve greatly enjoyed her fresh and feminist scary stories, the first being “The Return” and the second being “Cackle”. When I read that her next book was going to be about werewolves, I was pretty excited. I haven’t done much werewolf lore in my time dabbling in horror media, but I am more than happy to follow Harrison on any journey she wishes to take a reader on. So that meant that “Such Sharp Teeth” was on my radar for a very long time, and by the time I sat down to read it my expectations were pretty high. After all, werewolves AND snappy dialogue should tempt many a horror fan, right? Especially when feminist themes find their way into it as well.

I should revisit “Ginger Snaps”, it’s been too long. (source)

As far as a werewolf story goes, “Such Sharp Teeth” is a fun and at times gruesome take on the sub genre. We have the various elements of body horror that is required, as well as a nice look into the myth and the pieces of the lore that can be tinkered with and, in some ways, subverted. Rory’s monthly transformation is pretty gnarly, and I enjoyed watching the ways that her body changes not only during the full moon, but also in the ‘down time’ of the rest of the month. I also enjoyed the mystery of who exactly bit Rory, and how all the small town ups and downs make for a difficult time of being incognito when you are trying to solve a werewolf curse and all that comes with that. But I also liked the small town elements on their own even without the werewolf part, as a lot of the characters felt pretty realistic in their actions and personalities. Rory is very enjoyable as a protagonist, as she has enough edge and snark to make her funny in her banter and actions, but also a bit of vulnerability about being back in a place that has the people she loves most (her sister Scarlett) as well as a lot of baggage.

But it’s really the feminine rage that is at a simmer in this book and translates into a beastly transformation that did it for me. We got a little bit of this in “Cackle” with how the protagonist Annie finds her confidence and self worth through a supportive female friend, and “Such Sharp Teeth” shifts from self confidence to full on rage in a way that worked really well. Rory’s metamorphosis and realization that she is a werewolf stirs up and lines up with memories, resentments, and anger about traumas from her past in her hometown, and it seems like a fitting metaphor that a beast inside of her (be it werewolf or anger) struggles against her desire to contain and control it. We also have a little bit of examination about women and their bodies and how having control and agency over them can be difficult in certain circumstances, either vis a vis lycanthropy, societal misogyny, or, in the case of Rory’s twin Scarlett, pregnancy. Harrison is careful to keep these themes generally light but also necessarily serious when the moment calls for it, and in other author’s hands it may have felt heavy handed. Not so with Harrison.

For readers out there who want a read in line with the season, but perhaps not something that is SUPER scary, “Such Sharp Teeth” will be a healthy balance of the Halloween spirit and lighter fare. I really enjoy the stories that Harrison writes, and it was great having one for October again!

Rating 8: An enjoyable werewolf story that takes on feminine rage, “Such Sharp Teeth” is another great horror novel from Rachel Harrison!

Reader’s Advisory:

“Such Sharp Teeth” is included on the Goodreads list “Books Like Stranger Things”.

Kate’s Review: “House of Hunger”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “House of Hunger” by Alexis Henderson

Publishing Info: Ace, September 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: A young woman is drawn into the upper echelons of a society where blood is power, in this dark and enthralling gothic novel from the author of The Year of the Witching. Marion Shaw has been raised in the slums, where want and deprivation is all she knows. Despite longing to leave the city and its miseries, she has no real hope of escape until the day she spots a peculiar listing in the newspaper, seeking a bloodmaid.

Though she knows little about the far north–where wealthy nobles live in luxury and drink the blood of those in their service–Marion applies to the position. In a matter of days, she finds herself the newest bloodmaid at the notorious House of Hunger. There, Marion is swept into a world of dark debauchery–and at the center of it all is her.

Countess Lisavet, who presides over this hedonistic court, is loved and feared in equal measure. She takes a special interest in Marion. Lisavet is magnetic, and Marion is eager to please her new mistress. But when her fellow bloodmaids begin to go missing in the night, Marion is thrust into a vicious game of cat and mouse. She’ll need to learn the rules of her new home–and fast–or its halls will soon become her grave.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

Alexis Henderson’s debut novel “The Year of the Witching” was my favorite book in 2020. Her unique and dark witchcraft story really connected with me, as Henderson took familiar witch themes and turned them into broader commentaries on identity, groupthink, and fanaticism, and hell yes did it work for me. It’s probably no shock that when I heard she was writing a new book I was very excited. And when I read the description of “House of Hunger”, and realized that it was going to be Henderson’s take on vampires, my excitement went that much higher. I’m very particular about vampire stories, as I’ve mentioned before, but I had high hopes and full trust in Henderson.

This book is just awesome. It’s a fascinating deconstruction and reworking of a typical vampire story, and it also delves into the always complicated themes of class and privilege from our society and applies them to a fantasy world that is well conceived and interesting. Henderson’s world of the North and the South has a great set up and some fantastic world building, and I had a solid feel for the world that the story is set in. The nobles of the north who take on the bloodmaids are never referred to as vampires, per se, though there are plenty of hints that this is kind of what we are working with here: they live in a part of the world that has longer nights than the area that our protagonist Marion comes from, for one. There is the very obvious aspect of the blood drinking, and the harkening back to Lisvet’s ‘illness’ (probably extreme hemophilia) and how she needs blood to survive. And there is also the aristocratic lives that the nobles live, a theme that has been connected to vampire lore from the early days of the genre. I liked that Henderson opted to not go full vampire in the story, as it makes Lisvet and the other nobles of the houses more mysterious and seductive, and gives the story more room to explore the mythology of the world at hand. And we slowly get to see the tension and threat build, going at a pace that makes not only Marion, but also the reader, in a ‘frog in the pot of boiling water’ situation, unaware of the actual threat at hand until it is far, far too late. There are so many unsettling aspects of this story in terms of horror, and once it builds to some of the bigger reveals it jumps off the page and is solidly scary, scary stuff.

Speaking of Marion, I really liked her as our protagonist, as she is so many shades of grey and incredibly multi-faceted as a character. She is the perfect way to explore the other themes of the upper class exploiting the lower classes out of the sheer desperation that the have nots experience. When we meet Marion she is living in poverty with a sick and abusive brother, working under a cruel mistress at a backbreaking job with nothing to show for it. Of course the temptation of escape to live in the opulence of being a bloodmaid is going to tempt her! Sure, you have to give your mistress your blood, but in exchange Marion gets pampering, glamorous housing, all the delicious food she can eat, and then the attention of Lisvet, who makes her feel special and extraordinary. Marion is desperate, but she’s also ambitious, and Henderson definitely delves into darker areas with her character as she sees things that are questionable, but opts to explain them away as she loves her new life as a bloodmaid and the perks that it seems to have. And oh the metaphors of a wealthy elite like Lisvet literally drinking the blood from a lower class girl with few options like Marion and her other bloodmaid companions! I mean, there is a reason that Lisvet’s last name is Bathory, after all. It’s a great commentary on how the haves take the have nots for everything they’re worth, and can make them think that it’s some kind of honor or choice.

“House of Hunger” is a fantastic horror dark fantasy. Alexis Henderson is a horror voice to be paying attention to, as her deconstructions of familiar tropes turn into stories that are so incredibly special and unique. Cannot wait to see what she does next.

Rating 10: Unsettling, suspenseful, and a well done exploration of the haves and have nots, “House of Hunger” is another successful horror novel from Alexis Henderson.

Reader’s Advisory:

“House of Hunger” is included on the Goodreads list “Bathory Books”.

Kate’s Review: “Ghost Eaters”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “Ghost Eaters” by Clay McLeod Chapman

Publishing Info: Quirk Books, September 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received a print ARC from the publisher at ALAAC22.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: From the acclaimed author of The Remaking and Whisper Down the Lane, this terrifying supernatural page-turner will make you think twice about opening doors to the unknown.

Erin hasn’t been able to set a single boundary with her charismatic but reckless college ex-boyfriend, Silas. When he asks her to bail him out of rehab—again—she knows she needs to cut him off. But days after he gets out, Silas turns up dead of an overdose in their hometown of Richmond, Virginia, and Erin’s world falls apart.

Then a friend tells her about Ghost, a new drug that allows users to see the dead. Wanna get haunted? he asks. Grieving and desperate for closure with Silas, Erin agrees to a pill-popping “séance.” But the drug has unfathomable side effects—and once you take it, you can never go back.

Review: Thank you to Quirk Books for giving me an ARC of this book at ALAAC22 (and for Clay McLeod Chapman for signing it!)!

I had a few books that were must grabs at ALAAC22, and “Ghost Eaters” by Clay McLeod Chapman was on that list. I had read his book “Whisper Down the Lane”, and while I enjoyed it, it set off a bunch of my rage triggers regarding Satanic Panic, so I was more angry than scared as I read it. But when I read the description of this book there were no rage triggers to be found, which meant that I anticipated a more chill experience as I read it. Which, uh, wasn’t super correct. Was I rage filled as I read this book? No. Was it super terrifying and therefore it wasn’t exactly ‘chill’? Hell yes.

So the hype about this book being super scary? Accurate! I started reading this book in the evening, and once it became clear just how creepy it was going to be I made the decision to set it down and proceed in the morning. Which ended up being a good decision, because holy CATS, the ghosts in this book are SO disturbing and scary. You kind of get the gamut of things. You get shadows in corners. You get slow moving creepers closing in on Erin, our protagonist, and only she can see them as she takes a drug called “Ghost”, which allows her to do so. You get descriptions of rotting corpses, of spewed up ectoplasm, of ghost babies crawling around like feral animals, you get it all, and it really, REALLY messes with you. Chapman doesn’t hold back in the nightmare fuel department, as we travel through Richmond, Virginia with Erin as she starts seeing more and more ghosts after ingesting a drug that has this explicit purpose. The problem is, she just wanted to see ONE ghost in particular, that of Silas, her ex boyfriend who had a huge emotional hold on her and their friend group. So as more and more ghosts close in and she takes more and more Ghost in hopes of it finally being Silas, the tension builds and builds until it snaps, and boy oh BOY does it snap.

But Chapman doesn’t stop at making this a mere super scary ghost story. He also explores some very real world themes and horrors, namely that of addiction and the whitewashing of history. Addiction is probably the more obvious of the two, and while I think there could have been potential for it to come off as hamfisted or after school special-esque, Chapman always makes it feel earnest and super, super disturbing. Erin’s sadness and grief and loss and guilt drives her to try Ghost in hopes of finding closure with Silas, and she almost immediately spirals as the drug not only catches hold instantaneously, it also makes her a beacon for lost spirits that are drawn to her. But we also get a great foundation for why Erin is feeling this way over a man who was, by all accounts as seen in this story, kind of a selfish asshole, and the empathy he draws for her in her actions and also, somewhat, for him, makes it all the sadder and therefore all the scarier. And while she is terrified of the spirits, and the drug itself causes moments that cost her almost everything, she keeps coming back because of her need to see Silas one more time. It is the perfect metaphor for addiction, and while the ghosts are truly and incredibly scary, so is watching Erin completely wreck her life in the course of days, as well as seeing the other Ghost addicts as they spiral all in hopes of seeing a lost loved one again (a woman whose child died of SIDS was especially heartbreaking). Along with that, Chapman raises some GREAT points about ghost stories and folklore and how they have, in many ways, been whitewashed and in some ways romanticized. “Ghost Eaters” takes place in Richmond, a city that has been around a LONG time and has had a lot of blood spilled, a large part due to atrocities committed against Indigenous people and Black people. So many of the ghosts that Erin sees aren’t the wandering war widow or the little white girl from Antebellum times, but those of POC who died in horrific ways because of racism, Colonialism, and genocidal violence. As I was reading this book I kept thinking of “Ghostland” by Colin Dickey, which has this as a running theme, and LO AND BEHOLD this book was mentioned in the acknowledgements. What an awesome topic to tackle, and Champman does it with ease.

“Ghost Eaters” is a must read this Halloween season. Go get it, tear through it, and make sure you have the lights on.

Rating 9: Raw, profoundly disturbing, and genuinely scary, “Ghost Eaters” is a story that not only has some supremely fucked up ghosts, but also takes on themes like addiction, and which people are represented in traditional ghost stories.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Ghost Eaters” is included on the Goodreads list “Horror to Look Forward To in 2022”.

Kate’s Review: “Malice House”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “Malice House” by Megan Shepherd

Publishing Info: Hyperion Avenue, October 2022

Where Did I Get This Book: I received a print ARC from the publisher at ALAAC22.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Of all the things aspiring artist Haven Marbury expected to find while clearing out her late father’s remote seaside house, Bedtime Stories for Monsters was not on the list. This secret handwritten manuscript is disturbingly different from his Pulitzer-winning works: its interweaving short stories crawl with horrific monsters and enigmatic humans that exist somewhere between this world and the next. The stories unsettle but also entice Haven, practically compelling her to illustrate them while she stays in the house that her father warned her was haunted. Clearly just dementia whispering in his ear . . . right?

Reeling from a failed marriage, Haven hopes an illustrated Bedtime Stories can be the lucrative posthumous father-daughter collaboration she desperately needs to jump-start her art career. However, everyone in the nearby vacation town wants a piece of the manuscript: her father’s obsessive literary salon members, the Ink Drinkers; her mysterious yet charming neighbor, who has a tendency toward three a.m. bonfires; a young barista with a literary forgery business; and of course, whoever keeps trying to break into her house. But when a monstrous creature appears under Haven’s bed right as grisly deaths are reported in the nearby woods, she must race to uncover dark, otherworldly family secrets—completely rewriting everything she ever knew about herself in the process.

From New York Times bestselling author Megan Shepherd comes a complex tale of dark magic, family secrets, and monsters that don’t stay on the page.

Review: Thank you to Hyperion Avenue for giving me an ARC at ALAAC22!

It’s October, everyone, and that means that we are officially at the Most Wonderful Time Of The Year in my book: HALLOWEEN SEASON!!! And that also means that it is once again time for Horrorpalooza, in which my focus is on all horror or horror-esque titles for my blog posts through the end of the month! I’m feeling especially good about Halloween this year, as the whole family is vaxxed up, I have a slew of horror content I’m going to devour this month, and my kid is, through no undue influence of mine, FULLY INTO HALLOWEEN! Oh yeah, I’m READY.

As Betelgeuse says, ‘it’s showtime!’ (source)

And we are kicking off Horrorpalooza 2022 with a title that I have been eagerly awaiting for a long time. I first heard of “Malice House” by Megan Shepherd when Chuck Wendig was tweeting about it in a very positive way. Looking into it, it ticked off a lot of boxes that I love in a book: it’s horror based, it has Gothic elements, and it has a book theme within the narrative. I was super lucky that not only did they have ARCs of it at ALAAC22, but that Megan Shepherd was there signing said ARCs. I let it sit a bit, wanting to get closer to the spooky season before I picked it up, and then once I did, it snared me in almost immediately. It was worth the wait.

“Malice House” is just as much dark fantasy as it is a horror novel, and given that the two genres overlap a fair bit perhaps it’s not so much of a surprise that the combination works well. But Shepherd does a marvelous job of not leaning two much on either genre, while also bringing out the best of them both to create a very suspenseful, scary, and also dreamlike tale of loss, creativity, and the secrets kept within families and from those we love. Haven is our main character, who has returned to her father’s isolated old house after his death, her memories of a strained relationship haunting her as she lives in his famed novelist shadow. Haven is a good mix of deeply complex and somewhat unlikable, but Shepherd gives her the space to be these things without making her feel overdone or cartoonish. We get the sense that she is a bit unreliable, as she hid things from her father before his death, and as she starts to try and make movements regarding the lost manuscript she finds in his home, we start to realize that she’s not the only one with secrets and perhaps darker motivations. From locals who knew her father when he was alive to a mysterious neighbor to a barista who loves her father’s work, Haven has a lot of people who seem to be in her corner, but she soon finds out that, like her, everyone has their secrets. Secrets, isolation, a narrator who may not be reliable, oh how Gothic! And Shepherd really nails that tone.

The horror elements of this book are pretty strong, the dread slowly building up as Haven hears things in the walls, or fixates on tales of the demons that her dementia addled father was seeing as his condition deteriorated. And by the time people around town start dying in gruesome ways that may or may not connect to her father’s books, Haven has already fallen into a nightmare scape where things she thought were hallucinations are perhaps living, breathing threats. The various villains range from pretty run of the mill creature feature fare (a hellhound, a weird lobsterlike creature called ‘Pinchie‘), to far more sinister characters that really got under my skin (no spoilers here, but on in particular known as “Uncle Arnold” is not going to leave me any time soon). And that is what I loved the most about “Malice House”; it is not only a creepy and dreamlike supernatural tale, it is also a story about the power of art, and creativity, and how artistic creations can take on lives of their own that can stun even the creator. And sure, this is probably happening in the worst way imaginable in this book, but I thought it was a really, really nifty facet of this horror story that made me love it all the more.

“Malice House” absolutely lived up to my expectations. The ARC I have mentions that this is the first in a series, though I haven’t seen much additional information about that possibility. If it is, though, I am absolutely aching to see where Megan Shepherd takes Haven and the creatures of Malice House next.

Rating 9: Dark, unnerving, and a love letter to the power that art and stories can have, “Malice House” is a fun and chilling dark fantasy horror tale.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Malice House” isn’t included on any Goodreads lists yet, but I think it would fit in on “Modern Gothic”.